618 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



and projecting and narrow noses. Virchow, who had studied these 

 skulls, thought that this neolithic race of Worms was Aryan, or at 

 least of the stock from which the Aryans issued. Besides the skulls 

 there was also a large number of platycnemic tibiae, whole or 

 broken. On six skeletons the platy enemy could be measured, and 

 Herr Virchow carried out the measuring according to the French 

 method. 



Herr Kohl opened in the presence of Virchow some graves of the 

 Roman period and took from them four skeletons whose skulls were 

 diagnosed as mesaticephalic; only one was on the border line of 

 dolichocephaly.^ Here, then, cranial evolution was more advanced. 

 At Rheingewann, at Flomborn, and at Rheindurklieim, in the same 

 vicinity of Worms, there were found skulls of the end of the Bronze 

 Age which were mesaticephalic or dolichocephalic (especially those 

 of Flomborn), while at Adlersberg, still in the same region, the skulls 

 of the early Bronze Age were brachycephalic; that is, evoluted. 



Bartels was able to make a more complete comparative study of 

 these places, for he had at his disposal a series of 50 skulls.^ 



However, the evolution varied according to the locality. Thus in 

 15 skulls (6 of men, 9 of women) found at Alsheim (Rhenish Hessia), 

 the middle index was 73.5, the maximum 80.3, and the mini- 

 mum 69.8.=^ 



Baden. — According to Ammon, who made a special study of the 

 anthropology of Baden, the cephalic index of the population since 

 early German times has been generally approacliing brachycephaly. 

 Thus in the reihengraber dolichocephalic skuUs are found in the pro- 

 portion of 69.2 per cent with an index of 80, while in the present 

 inhabitants the proportion is only 15 per cent. On the other hand 

 the brachycephals, with an index of 85 and above, constituted only 

 9.4 per cent among the old Germans, while among the present they 

 are represented by 33.5 per cent. 



Ammon ascribed the cause of this change of the indices to some sort 

 of natural selection which is noticeable everywhere, in the army, 

 among professional men, among merchants, and in the laboring world. 

 According to this theory natural selection differentiates and separates 

 the different classes one from another and effects subdivisions within 

 the classes, particularly in the class of working people, whose eco- 

 nomic and social rise, he says, is made possible only by selection, 

 survival of the best.* 



> Virchow. Eroeflnung prahistorischer und romischer Graber in Worms. Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologic, 

 1897. 



' Bartels. Uber Schadel der Steinzeit und der friihen Bronzezeit aus der Umgegend von Worms-a-Rhein. 

 Zeitsch f. Ethnologie, 1904. 



'Virchow. Reihengraberfelde bei Alsheim. Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie, 1877. 



< Ammon. Dienatiirliche AuslesebeimMcnschen. Jena, 1898. See also ZurAnthropologie der Badener, 

 by the same, Jena, 1S99. 



